


Some New Shore

by Barkour



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Romance Novel, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Shut Up Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mills & Boon AU: The first time Ser Dorian Pavus meets Captain Iron Bull he scales a balcony and kisses Dorian breathless! And, after years of trying to behave, Dorian can’t help but think the Qunari’s piratical wildness is just what he needs. (Original summary from Breaking the Rake's Rules by Bronwyn Scott.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some New Shore

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Unconventional Courtship 2015 challenge! For those not in the know, how it works is like this: you pick a romance novel and write a fic based off the book's summary. I chose Breaking the Rake's Rules by Bronwyn Scott. :)
> 
> This is the prequel, of sorts, to a much longer fic I need to sit down and outline. For more info about that, as well as a content warning, check the author's notes at the end. For visuals: reference concept art for Dorian and (especially) for the Iron Bull.

"But I see your lemonade is low, hospita," said Dorian, "et matertera magna." He swept each distinguished woman a low bow. "Allow me the honor of refreshing your glasses."

His great-aunt commended his manners as she gave him her glass, but Magister Tilani gave him a knowing look. Dorian deepened both his smile and his bow as he held his gloved hand out to her. 

"I do so like to see a young man of such upright character," she said dryly. "Tell your tutor he's direly missed."

"I'm only going to the refreshments table, Magister Tilani."

"Maevaris," she said, "how many times must I tell you? Magister Tilani makes me sound so old." Maevaris found yet vaster deserts to emulate. "And where else would Alexius be?" She turned to the third woman, really a girl, of the party, as if to dismiss Dorian. Holding both glasses, he too turned, though away. 

"Now, I'll have no tears from you, there will be more handsome men to play with--"

"Maevaris!"

"Handsome men for you as well, if you like," Maevaris told Dorian's great-aunt. "As for you, sweet girl, you can have ever so much more fun with men who don't spend so much time looking at their own reflections." Maevaris winked solemnly at him over the old woman's modestly bared shoulder.

He took the escape. The girl's forlorn gaze weighed on his back. She might have pitched her lemonade in the near fern if she'd thought Dorian might fetch her another glass. He sighed through his nose. That was hardly charitable. It wasn't the girl's fault his father had broken years of perfectly cordial silence with Felicitia Pavus née Olea's many aunts to solicit their tokens in the newest gaming fad, Marry the Heir. He'd be neck deep in matron aunts and matchmaking schemes till Halward managed an engagement or Dorian finally stuck his head under in hopes of a swift drowning. That wasn't terribly charitable either. He didn't terribly care.

A slave passed by with a tray for unwanted dishes, and Dorian left him the pair of glasses. He weaved through the worst of the crowd, and about the sofas so artfully positioned throughout the great room, and away as he might from the hawkish looks of hopeful mamas and doting papas. 

Wards of Maevaris' usual fastidious construction marked off what doors in the townhouse might and might not be opened by guests. One such door, as Dorian knew, opened onto a little study with two narrow glass doors that opened onto a likewise little balcony, for sitting and reading and looking out at the bay. He made for this door, walking with the confidence of a man who had every right to do whatever it was he did, the fingers of one hand in a low pocket of his jacket and the other at his side. 

As he came to the door he made a glyph with a finger in his pocket, the glyph for _ianuam aperi_ , then took the knob in his loose hand, turned it, and pushed. The door did not open. His brow rose; but perhaps it was the cloth had made his sign unclear. He took his hand from his pocket and made the sign again, and this time when he turned the knob and pushed, the ward allowed the door to open to him. 

Dorian stepped lightly into the study; he closed the door at his back; he held his palm a moment on the knob on the inside and wrote with his thumb, _rescind_. The ward awoke. The hum of it flickered beneath his palm. Weakened, perhaps, by his interrupting it, but Maevaris was strong enough a mage the ward would yet suffice. If she'd witnessed his act or learned of it he'd a practical lesson in his future.

Perhaps not. Alone in the study Dorian expelled breath between his teeth and pulled at his gloves. If Alexius' application to the senate should meet with approval, then in six months time, Dorian would be conquering his life's curse of seasickness. In the name of what? Why, discovery, of course, or rather: rediscovery. Whence man? He fitted the gloves together then folded them neatly in half and pocketed the pair in his red coat, though the pockets were shallow and fitted only the fingers. The wrists stuck out.

The months between would be dedicated to all the practical details of so large an endeavour: the chartering of suitable vessels, at least four, and crews to run them, the provision of supplies, the grim preparations for whatever disaster might befall an expedition to the east, and so on, and on, and on. 

He brushed at his hair, long to his jaw, and crossed to the glass doors. They, at least, opened readily. Facing to the east, and with the summer afternoon well in its cups, the balcony sat in deep shadows. The flowering sun's-spray vines, guided up sturdy white-painted trellises to the balcony's rail, had begun to close their yellow- and pink-spotted blossoms into little, dark buds. Along the harbor wall that noted the end of the private, fenced grounds of the row of townhouses, and the line of the common path, a flank of seabirds shouted at each other. 

Coming up to the rail, he leaned his elbows upon it and leaned his weight upon his elbows. He crossed an ankle over the back of the other calf and breathed in the sea air. The salt sting of it always seemed pleasant on shore.

Of course Alexius could not give his regards to the afternoon's hostess. Dorian flexed his thumbs and touched the two stacked rings at the knuckle of his left thumb, twisting the metal as he thought again how he ought to be in Minrathous with Alexius; he ought to be making the application with Alexius; it was as much his child as it was Alexius'. Though not, perhaps, the child Dorian's father wanted, thought Dorian. He laughed at this. Even to Dorian, alone on the shadowed balcony, the laugh sounded something bleak. 

He rubbed at his thumb and looked unseeing out over the low-set harbor wall, across the water and to the sea horizon. And Alexius had other concerns of late, he thought. The moons grew stronger as the sun did weaker. Their ghosts brightened in the sky. He shifted and pushed off the rail. His hands went to his pockets; his fingers fitted easily to the cloth, then he took them out again. An agitation was in him. He pulled at his thumb and frowned.

That girl had not been the first sent after him today. He suspected the desperation evident in how she cupped her glass in both hands, the quickness of her laugh, less a compliment to the figure he cut and more a condemnation of how urgently her own parents had set her to the task of wooing the last great bachelor of the age. 

Well, there'd be a new crop of young and eligible men soon enough, though Dorian flattered himself to think none of them would be half so handsome or so talented as he; but then that knowledge had never stopped him from taking a look. No amount of urgency on Halward's setting Dorian to task had managed it either. And if he did look then he'd do what he'd always done, what every man of good breeding did when his eye wandered to some person other than his wife, or the vision of a wife. Perhaps wives bought whores too.

"Enough," said Dorian. He'd closed his eyes against it, against all of it. His jaw set. The corners ached. So too did his thumb where he pinched it hard in the other hand, manicured nails turned in to pull at the rings. In six months none of this would matter, as if any of it had ever mattered much at all. The senate would consider Alexius' proposal--the proposal Dorian had written, and researched, and pitched to Alexius, and conceived five years ago--and then they, as Alexius had done upon consideration of Dorian's early work, would approve it. He'd be at sea, no doubt vomiting his guts over the rail for days on end, but unwed and for good, entirely appropriate, not in the least bit scandalous reason. Surely his father's armies would be satisfied with that. 

And when he came home in two years, or three, he would marry a beautiful heiress and fuck her in the dark twice weekly till the lineage was assured and then he would have his affairs and she would have her affairs and with any luck at all one day Dorian would believe it was all of it just, all of it right. 

"Look on the bright side," he muttered. "With a little more luck you might be lost at sea."

He stayed there a while, just outside the doors, the glass made to mirrors by the thickness of the shadows. He stayed there listening to the gulls and smelling the salt and thinking of what else but the nearness of tomorrow, and the day after that. The vines trembled; they tightened then eased, as some cat walked along them below the balcony, out of sight.

Dorian stirred. How long sulking? They would miss him sooner or later. More young heiresses to dance with and men not to look at too closely. Ever that threat of scandal, as though Dorian had so much as held another man's hand in these last five months. And here, more sulking, when he ought to celebrate the money he'd saved.

He turned away from the harbor, and the waters made dark by dusk, and the glimmers yet of light on the moving waves. He was just past the threshold of the study when a noise, muffled, like a sneeze deposited up a sleeve, caught his ear. Dorian glanced, a reflexive gesture; then he looked again, startled.

A very large, muscular, very grey arm gripped the balcony. The attached shoulder pushed up, rounded, strained; another arm, this one a prosthetic with a wicked double-pronged hook in place of a hand, swung over the balcony, and the man--the horned man--the Qunari heaved over the balcony and came down heavily upon one knee. Dorian went very still in the deeper shadows of the study, just beyond the opened doors, but the Qunari remained with his head hanging a moment and the hook set like a cane against the tiles. The whole of that arm was a prosthetic; he'd some sort of mechanical rig, a bar extending from the upper portion to the inside of the wrist, that held the arm slightly bent as like at the elbow. 

The Qunari pulled in a breath and twitched. Covering his nose, he sneezed twice in rapid order. Each sneeze sounded like an abortive roll of thunder.

"Damn vines," he said in a stuffy voice, then he sneezed a final time and wiped his hand on his trousers.

Dorian, unwilling to move, even knowing he would be spotted sooner or later, sucked scornfully at his teeth. The sound of that carried very well. The Qunari lifted his head. He'd an ornate eyepatch over the one eye, and a ruff of black hair that ran down back into a braid, and a black beard to match it, and (now the Qunari clambered to his feet) a long sword at his side that was nearly as ominous as the wide, straight spread of his horns. Those turned up at the ends to points. The sword ran straight to its point. His eye--like silverite--fixed on Dorian. He blinked. He had a surprising number of eyelashes.

Dorian reached for his thumb. The metal of his rings heated beneath his fingertips; he turned the rings counter-clockwise and wondered how thorough Maevaris had made her wards; was it a proper barrier, and would it hold in fire, for instance? He'd hate to burn down her lovely townhouse. And how, he thought, had the Qunari got up the balcony and then over the rail? The trellis.

The Qunari covered his nose again, long thumb and longer finger to either side. He dipped his chin, sheepish. 

"Can't help it," he said. "Allergies. Gets pretty bad this time of year 'round here." He sniffed, demonstrating, and tugged on his nose. His hand fell. The crags of his face showed again.

"Most people would carry a handkerchief." Dorian held his thumb, fingers pinching the rings. Five long steps to the door. He could crack the ward if need presented. 

The Qunari's shoulders filled the balcony threshold. All of him filled it, from thick chest to thicker gut to thigh. His horns would have cracked the top of the door frame, if he'd made a move forward.

Instead the Qunari snapped his fingers and smiled lazily. "Knew I must have forgotten something this morning. Maybe Maeve'll let me borrow one. If I promise to clean it and press it."

"Ah. Acquainted with Magister Tilani, are you?" 

The metal plate beside the front entrance to the townhouse stated in clean calligraphy that Villa Floweret stood in Maevaris Tilani's name.

"Oh, yeah," said the Qunari, "me and Maeve, we go a ways back." The twin prongs of his hook hand had the look of rough iron; they were blunted, meant for gripping, or for beating.

"Well, then she'll be happy to know you've made it," said Dorian. He inclined his head over his shoulder, in direction of the door.

The Qunari suddenly grinned. His scarred cheek rounded, and the skin flowing beneath the patch tightened. Laughing, he said, "Just about dinner time, if I know Maeve. Hey, I'm starving," and gripping the top of the door frame in his hand, he bent easily to step through it. The false arm hung at his side. To use it the Qunari had to swing from his shoulder, and his shoulder was without tension. 

It was that decided Dorian.

Dorian dropped his thumb, that he might hold both his hands up to the man to stop him where he stood. "You're not exactly dressed for a party," he said. "Unless the theme was piracy and nobody told me."

In the doorway, he stopped. He wasn't exactly dressed at all, though Dorian hadn't paid much mind to the man's lack of shirt or coat when he'd so many things with points. Thank goodness for summer or he'd two more. 

"Oh, damn," said the Qunari, "was that tonight?"

"Didn't you read your invitation?"

The Qunari gave him a lidded look. "Must've lost it." Sardonic, that's what it was, but amused as well.

"Surely you don't mean to say you weren't invited." Dorian could do sardonic just as finely as any bearded, prisebar-handed brute, and he did it artfully too, with a hand at his chest and his mouth a moue, all faint surprise.

"Get so many invitations to perform at noble parties," said the Qunari, "you start losing track of 'em."

"Do they have schedules where you're from?"

The Qunari's rumpled cheek pulled again. He swiped at the end of his nose with one thick finger. "Where I'm from--"

Shouting, from the harbor wall: the Qunari tipped his head, to position an ear. Dorian made out some of the tenor of the shouting, and a little of the content, and whatever good will the man had tricked him into fled. 

"Well, where's the horned bastard got to?" one of the voices had asked. "He's too big to have got away--"

"Hard to keep track of him with all that damned smoke--"

The Qunari's horns cut through the shadows. He turned to look at Dorian.

The officer in charge said, "Well, check the residences door by door if you have to, maybe someone's seen him," and that was when Dorian lunged to meet the Qunari's outstretched hand. Dorian's own hand lit, a sheet of flame licking from fingertip to his wrist, sparked from the line between the two rings of his thumb. He aimed to strike the Qunari's crippled shoulder. At least get that damned hook out of the way. 

But the Qunari moved with outrageous speed, twisting away so Dorian's burning knuckles only just brushed his breast. That prosthetic arm came up; he knocked Dorian's wrist out and, as Dorian balanced, reached with his true hand to grasp Dorian's shoulder and squeeze. The bone popped. So it seemed to Dorian. The fire cupping his hand trembled at its boundaries, then those fell, and the flames ran up to his elbow, then higher. The Qunari grimaced: fire bit at his wrist. 

Dorian grinned meanly at him and grabbed the Qunari's forearm. The muscles tensed beneath the skin.

"Don't care for the heat?"

Of all things, the Qunari looked impressed, not at the trick with the fire, but that joke.

"Did you have that one figured out or did you make it up just now?" he asked.

"What, really, are you serious?" asked Dorian. "I'm about to set your trousers on fire."

"Okay," said the Qunari. "You're on fire too."

"Yes, but it doesn't burn me."

"Hm," said the Qunari, still gripping Dorian's shoulder. "Handy. That's a nice trick."

Dorian pushed against that grip. He got nowhere, but at least the Qunari was sweating, his grey skin gleaming with it by the firelight roiling off Dorian's skin and his once beautiful coat jacket, now seared away up to the shoulder seam.

"They'll see the fire, and they'll come looking here right away," said Dorian. "Whatever barbarism you've done--"

The Qunari's lean jaw worked. The beard was lean, too, cut to follow the lines of his jaw. Some drop of sweat moved from the corner of his flexing jaw to trace along a tendon in his throat. Again, Dorian pushed. This time the Qunari let his shoulder go, and Dorian stumbled, then came up swinging for the throat. If he'd his staff--

(He'd an unbidden memory of his mother, gaily dressed in silver with tiny, perfect red flowers woven into her hair as she bent to fuss over him before she left for one of her nightly engagements.

"Oh, dear heart, you must be _careful_ when you're playing sticks, you know one of the worst things you can do with a staff is give someone a good hit in the neck, oh! A broken neck, lovey, a broken neck is awful, just dreadful. I suppose it must be," she said thoughtfully, her fingers pausing mid-flick upon his spotless shoulders, "if you die of it."

"I'm not trying to kill any of the others," Dorian protested.

"Oh, well," she'd said, "if you ever decide to, that's the way to do it.")

He hadn't his staff. The Qunari turned his weak shoulder to block Dorian's strike. Carrying through the motion, the Qunari knocked his arm wide again, stepped closer, fisted Dorian's collar, and shoved him back against the shelves. A book toppled to the floor. Dorian bent the cover in, crushing it with his heel. 

He's going to kill me, thought Dorian clearly. As clearly he thought, I'm going to light up his lungs. Let him roast to death from inside. Dorian drew in the breath to spit the wind, and then the Qunari said, "Sorry about this. But it's better than dying, right?" and bent and kissed Dorian.

Dorian swallowed his breath. His lungs did not ignite. Stupidly he looked at the Qunari, who looked back at Dorian with that one eye lidded. The man had a scar running along his lip. Dorian felt it as his lips moved against Dorian's, of all things trying to coax. To coax! As if--as though-- 

Sear his skin, thought Dorian. Melt the metal of that prosthetic arm. The Qunari's beard scratched at Dorian's mouth, his jaw, his chin. The nose was long and close to the Qunari's face, and it was broken halfway up; he felt the bump as the Qunari turned his head to try again at another angle. His lips were warm, as gentle as the hand at Dorian's collar was immovable. Blast the bastard away and torch the room. Dorian breathed out between his parting lips and tipped up his chin. He meant to speak an incendiary word through his teeth. That was what should be done. 

Dorian opened his mouth and leaned into the kiss.

The Qunari's brow creased. He hummed in his throat, a single note that ran through Dorian's teeth.

What the hell was he doing? 

Then the hand at his collar shifted. Those long, wide fingers slid up the length of Dorian's throat to move along the curve of his head. The palm settled against his jaw. A thumb stroked his cheek.

Their lips separated wetly. The Qunari's eye dropped, then he looked at Dorian and said, "All right." He had a deep voice; it caught in Dorian's chest. A deep voice, made nasal by the pollen. He bent.

With three fingers Dorian caught the bar of the prosthetic arm, that length of metal that held the elbow bent. His fingers were cool, and the study dark. The fire had gone out. The Qunari stroked his cheekbone again, and then bent his thumb to press against the bone.

What was it that made Dorian tighten his hand upon that bar and push himself up to wedge open the kiss? The sea air. That girl forlorn with her hands closed about her glass of lemonade, sent to woo someone she didn't want. God! he'd pitied her. It was the pity had driven him away. He thought of none of this. He would not think of it.

Dorian worked hungrily at the man's mouth, plying at him with everything he had, tooth and tongue and lip. Evidently he believed in reciprocation: after Dorian had licked at the man's teeth and teased at his tongue, the man tilted his head and turned out his lower lip and came devouringly upon Dorian's mouth. All of it hot, all of it wet, all of Dorian tightening at the absolute constancy of his attention, as though the man had forgotten about his pursuers in favor of fucking Dorian's mouth with his rough, broad tongue. He tasted faintly of elfroot.

His pursuers, Dorian though. He groaned and then bit savagely at the man's tongue, for the pleasure of it. That thumb pressed to his cheek again, and Dorian smiled into the kiss. Mock contrite, he sucked at the man's tongue, drawing back on it to round his lips on the tip for a little kiss before he nipped the tip hard.

The man's breath came thick as bellows. He stared down at Dorian. The fullness of the man's lower lip contrasted with the scarred thinness of the upper. Dorian watched the man swipe at both with his abused tongue.

"Shit," said the man. His fingers flexed once, twice, only the first knuckles, against Dorian's nape.

Dorian became suddenly aware of the weight of the Qunari's hand on his neck, the stirring arousal between his own legs, the calling of the birds along the harbor wall, and the shelves pushing into his back. The shadows were heavy; the light of the half- and quarter- moons illuminated only the Qunari's greyness, and his breadth.

Dorian's nostrils flared. His grip on that metal bar tightened convulsively. He was thinking again of striking a fire.

The man let go of Dorian. He held his hand up and out, palm to Dorian, and said, "Easy."

"What," said Dorian. He was breathing heavily too. His throat crawled; he swallowed. "What the hell was that?"

"Normally I'd ask before doing something like that."

"That's not an answer."

The false arm hung between them. Belatedly Dorian released the bar. The Qunari rolled his shoulder, swinging the arm back without aggression.

"Hey, I said I was sorry."

"You don't look sorry."

The Qunari glanced at the balcony. The moonlight gleamed across his face; it stuck on his slicked lips. His eye turned back to Dorian. A flick of a smile pulled at his mouth, and Dorian lifted his gaze quickly.

"Neither do you," said the Qunari. "Funny. Huh?"

"Ha ha," said Dorian.

"You rather I'd killed you?"

"No, I much prefer being pushed against the bookshelves and savaged."

"You bleeding?" The Qunari shifted his weak shoulder away and his hale one nearer, as though to reach for him.

"What concern!" said Dorian. "I'm touched. First you'll kill me, now you wonder if I bleed."

"For what it's worth," said the Qunari, "I didn't bite _you_."

"That's not--" Dorian's mother was fair enough her blushes showed. Thank God he'd inherited his father's darker skin. "That isn't--"

"Just trying to defend yourself?"

"A true bleeding heart," said Dorian rather than answer. The truth horrified; a lie was too much.

The Qunari bent his head and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. His lower lip pushed out when he brought his hand down to study it.

"Well," he said, looking woeful but sounding unbothered, "you're fine. But I might be bleeding."

"I didn't bite you that hard," Dorian snapped.

"You always bite when you got something in your mouth?"

"Not always," Dorian said, "only when it's shoved in," and then he was _really_ grateful to his father's side of the family.

The Qunari palmed his mouth, tugging at his jaw as he drew his hand down. 

"I'll remember that," he said.

"I doubt it'll come up again." Then, crossly, as the Qunari was grinning, he added, "We don't run in the same circles."

"So sure." The Qunari was still grinning. If he'd made a joke about coming up, Dorian resolved to torch him after all. He should have done that first thing anyway. "But me and Maeve, we're pals."

"And where's your proof?" Dorian crossed his arms. He was startled to find the right sleeve gone, his arm thus bare, the skin sticky as with sweat. But of course it had burned away with the fire. "I know Magister Tilani. If she were friends with a Qunari, a one-handed Qunari--"

"Other hand was just slowing me down," said the Qunari. "Don't worry. I can still keep up."

Dorian squinted. "Are you trying to wink?"

"No," he said.

"Oh," said Dorian, noted wit.

"Okay," said the Qunari. "You got me. I was winking. Don't ask a guy to explain if he's winking. That kills the fun of it."

The nakedness of his arm tugged at him. He could not stop thinking of the sleeve burned off, and the Qunari standing there, making no moves toward Dorian, and the burn mark at his wrist where the flames at Dorian's shoulder had bit at the Qunari.

"Why are we talking about this?" asked Dorian.

The Qunari considered him. He'd a fleeting suspicion of judgment.

"You seem like a fun guy to talk to," said the Qunari. "Under other circumstances. Maybe next time Maeve throws a shindig."

"Why not come say hello now?" asked Dorian. "You could hardly scandalize more than my new sleeveless fashion."

It was, of course, an accusation, and thinly sheltered: he was doubting again that the man knew Maeve at all. Perhaps he had weakened the ward too much when he opened and replaced it; perhaps the ward had never covered the balcony. Surely the Qunari calling his bluff earlier had done so in hopes of getting near enough to Dorian to silence him. How? thought Dorian. By kissing him against the door rather than against the books? He dismissed the thought.

"Wouldn't want to steal the party," said the Qunari.

"But there's your friends to consider," said Dorian. "They were looking for you earlier, weren't they?"

The Qunari smiled pleasantly. The corners of Dorian's jaw hurt: the man played dim well, but he _was_ playing at it.

"Tell 'em I said hi."

"I will," said Dorian.

The line of the Qunari's smile changed; it lengthened and grew sharp, with real humor. He inclined his head: tipped his horns to Dorian; then he turned to the balcony doors.

Dorian unfolded his arms. He pinched his thumb again. The residual heat in the rings throbbed.

"You could tell them yourself."

The Qunari looked back over his heavy shoulder at Dorian. Another smile, this one cloaked in thick shadow. 

"And ruin the party?" he asked. "Tsk-tsk, pretty mage."

"Don't call me that," said Dorian sharply.

"Then what should I call you?" He paused at the balcony doors, his hand on the glass. Thin, white-ish scars showed against his knuckles, illuminated in the moonlight.

Dorian presented the man with his profile. "Nothing."

"Don't be modest," said the Qunari. "You're something, all right."

"I ought to drag you out there, smoking--"

"Probably," he said, looking down over the balcony railing. The moons were in his horns now, cradled in the expanse between the two point. The length of his nape was muscular and worn, and the black braid sat between his powerful shoulder blades. Something else sat in Dorian's mouth, fat and lonely on his tongue.

The Qunari looked back at him a last time. His mouth turned.

"But you won't," he said. "Ser Something."

Then he gripped the railing, swung over, and dropped. There was a muffled whumph, as he landed on the grass. As Dorian stood there in the study, ragged burnt threads from his coat tickling his bared shoulder, he listened for the man's flight. He heard two steps, three, but for all that the Qunari was a great, big fellow, he walked lightly. Then he was gone.

Dorian carded his fingers up through his hair, carding the long strands from his brow. The heel of his hand pressed to his forehead. He'd a faint headache. Dinner would have started a half hour ago, and channeling incendiary spells without a staff ate up mana as a fire did dry wood. 

His wrist, naked, was before his eyes. Sucking at his tongue, he lowered his hand and looked to the site of the amputation. Gone was the sleeve entire. The brocade of his waistcoat had singed, and the smell of smoke clung to his collar. It wasn't the exposed skin he feared; it was the uneven hem and that black blot marring the fine embroidery.

"Well, that," he muttered, "and the little detail of letting the Qunari kiss you." Judicious, he perceived, to censor events. "At least they'll all be at dinner." What a tremendous comfort, that.

Dorian ran his hand over his face and gave up. He ought have resigned himself to suffering the matchmaking designs of his aunt and all those despairing parents. Look what came of hiding away in studies. A trampled book, his coat ruined. He touched the corner of his mouth. Lips, bruised. 

"Damned beast!" he said to his fingertips, and then he gestured to the door to break the ward and stepped out. As he did so, he slipped one hand to his pocket. His gloves were gone. Of course he'd dropped them.

A slave was tidying the last of the sofas, bent on her knees with her back hunched to scrub at some stain or other on the fabric. Someone had wanted to make room for dinner and left it to this poor grandmother to clean up. 

"Avia!" 

She looked up slowly; a finely printed cloth covered her head. When she at last focused upon Dorian, walking purposefully to her, she gasped and dropped her wash rag.

"Serah!"

"Don't put your back out on my account, avia," he said, and he bent to catch her arm as she struggled to stand. "Would you mind passing on a message to your mistress? Tell her Dorian--that's Dorian Pavus, yes, of House Pavus--tell her I need to speak with her, in that study over there."

She'd served many years indeed, and did not so much as glance at the stained sofa. "Of course, serah," she said, and she gave him a fragile curtsy before she took her leave.

Dorian, however, did glance at the sofa. It was a wine stain and already deeply set in the fabric. Briefly he closed his eyes, pained; and then he fished the handkerchief from his pocket and laid it out over the stain. He'd no experience lifting stains. Covering it was the least courtesy he could offer.

He wondered what the Qunari would have said or done if he'd offered the handkerchief to him. Perhaps he would have laughed.

"I should have pushed him off the balcony," said Dorian aloud to the empty room.

Maevaris was another fifteen minutes. By then Dorian had much subdued his temper though he hadn't found his gloves; he though he must have lost them when he was looking over the balcony. He wondered in passing if the Qunari had picked them, but then he'd recalled leaning against the rail and putting his fingers in his pockets, with nothing in them. If they'd fallen they had fallen into the vines, or perhaps to the ground beneath the balcony.

The door clicked. Dorian turned from consideration of the silver-touched harbor wall and the murmuring sea beyond it.

"I was wondering where you had gone," said Maevaris as she opened the door. Her skirts, black silk finely accented with blue gems and embroidery, had caught on the knob as she made to sweep through, and so she was a moment as she untangled them, her attention set low. "And it was only that poor, dear girl frightened you off to break into my study. Goodness, Dorian, did you fall asleep in here?"

Then Maevaris looked at him.

"Dorian!" she said. "Your _coat_!"

"Yes," he said, "it's a loss. Or perhaps I'll start a new fashion. Ragged hems. An upscale street look."

"Dorian!" she said. A dangerous tone entered her voice. "Why is there ash on my Nevarran carpet? And whose boot print is that on my copy of Vilatius' memoir?"

"Ah," said Dorian. "Is that what that was?"

"Please tell me that you're all right," said Maevaris, "and that this is not your boot print."

"I'm fine," said Dorian, "but Vilatius' memoir is overwrought and sensationalized."

"It's a first edition, I don't care if he made the whole thing up," said Maevaris. "Dorian, I expect you to be honest. _Are_ you all right? What on earth happened in here?" 

She flitted about the room, touching his face as if to judge the truthfulness of his cheekbones, then looking critically at Vilatius, laid so low, and then walking out in her whispering skirts onto the moonlit balcony.

"Would it have anything to do with those foolish watchmen who interrupted the appetizers?"

"He claimed to be a friend of yours," said Dorian.

Maevaris swore. "That man! I told him only if it was necessary. I ought to flog him." Her irritation softened to fondness. "Though God knows he'd enjoy it." Her skirts rustled as she pivoted on her heel. Briskly Maevaris hiked the voluminous skirt up on one side and crossed back to Dorian.

"So he was telling the truth," said Dorian.

"Iron Bull always tells the truth," said Maevaris. "When he isn't telling you the truth, he tells you he's lying. Yes, the Bull is a friend. And you attacked him!"

"He attacked me!" said Dorian, and Maevaris looked at him with her sculpted eyebrows arched high. "Well," said Dorian, "he did. In a manner of speaking." Maevaris expected honesty. "I returned in kind."

"Oh, _Dorian_ ," said Maevaris. She smiled suddenly, a brilliant thing that lit her as neatly as the moons did the sea. "Well, I can't blame you. He's got the rough hand of a dock man and the shoulders of a horse, and his smile! Well."

Dorian stooped to retrieve the battered Vilatius. "And you've extended him hospitality? Refuge?" 

Maevaris sighed. He offered the Vilatius, and Maevaris looked searchingly at him before she took it.

"Understand," she said, "that I don't enjoy keeping secrets."

"I haven't known you to keep them, Magister."

She did not correct him. "There are certain elements at work in Tevinter that I find troublesome. Worrisome." Her brow remained arched. She waited.

"The Venatori," he said.

Maevaris nodded and smoothed out her skirts, straightening them over her knees with a twitch of the hand. 

"Silly cultists, with more zeal than brain, but..." She tapped one elegant sapphire-encrusted nail against Vilatius' creased cover. "Your father won't have spoken of it. His interests have always lain with Qarinus rather than the imperial situation."

"Yes, I know," said Dorian dryly.

"Shush," said Maevaris, but a ghostly smile passed across her lips. "As I was saying. Before a young man rudely interrupted."

"A dashing young man."

"A horribly handsome young man," said Maevaris, "with little respect for his elders."

"I have great respect for you," said Dorian.

She dimpled. "Yes. That's why you've trampled my books."

"Extenuating circumstances," said Dorian. "Your Iron Bull pressed."

"He's not my Iron Bull," said Maevaris. "I don't think he's anyone's Iron Bull's. Or perhaps he's everyone's. Hm." She flittered her fingers, dashing the thought. "Anyway, there's been a worrying rise in that sort of militaristic gung-ho the state! the state! the state! talk, and the Iron Bull has been so kind as to offer his considerable assistance in listening to all the talk."

"Him?" Dorian scoffed. "That noisy barbarian? I doubt he could lace boots."

"He's slyer than you give him credit for," she said, amused. "He has a way of ingratiating himself so that you feel as if you've known him for ages."

Dorian said nothing to this. Nor did he speak of Alexius, or of the tracts neatly shelved between the research materials for the sea voyage and the journals of Alexius' temporal theoretics.

"The Venatori concern you," he said.

"Oh, xenophobes and conservatives always find support when people panic. See the conflict on the continent solved," said Maevaris, meaning the schism between the circles and the templars, "and they'll scuttle back to their little roach holes." She was brightening. "It's nothing for you to worry about. Not with your grand voyage before you."

"If the senate agrees to it."

Maevaris wafted her hand. "Soup in the pot. It's exactly the sort of thing the Imperium needs. Get all our minds off these dreadful conspiracies."

"You say it as if it were so easily done," said Dorian. 

She took his arm and guided him out of the study, Vilatius tucked into a pocket somewhere in all her skirts.

"All things may be done with faith in the Maker," said Maevaris piously. "Now let's see if we can't find you something more appropriately salacious to wear."

"If it's all the same to you," Dorian said, "I'd rather just go back to my apartments."

"Nonsense, all my assignations have wonderful taste. Tell me," she said suddenly, her hand tightening upon his arm, "that Iron Bull was not rough with you. If he did anything unseemly--if he forced you--I'll have the bastard gutted and granched."

"Your irreplaceable contact?"

"Damn the contacts," said Maevaris, "I can always find another pirate. Dorian--"

He hesitated a moment, and Maevaris' guise chilled; the humor in her features turned to something horrid and cold.

"No rougher than I was," said Dorian.

"You're sure," said Maevaris.

He thought of the Qunari smiling at him in the half-moonlight, the quarter-moonlight, his horns gleaming with silver and his hooked hand held at rest and the sword at his side sheathed, as it had stayed sheathed, and the way he had apologized before he kissed Dorian.

"If anything," Dorian said, "I might have been too rough on him. You may never see your Iron Bull again."

Maevaris eased. "Don't underestimate him," she said, mollified. "He's very tenacious."

"Really?" said Dorian. "I thought him brutish. And he smelled awfully."

"It's something in their sweat, I think," said Maevaris, "though Bull claims we smell like old pork."

"The nerve of him."

"Well," said Maevaris, "he is a pirate, Dorian. They aren't known for their fine breeding."

"Or their hygiene," said Dorian, but as he recalled it, the Bull had tasted sharply of mint, very clean, striking, and the smell of him hadn't bothered Dorian at all.

Maevaris asked "What do you think of velvet?" and steered him away.

*

It was a month before the college made its ruling. When the college did hand their decision down, Dorian considered it. He considered it very thoroughly. Then he got very thoroughly drunk and, pursuant to this, very thoroughly sick. After that he just got very, very angry.

What the hell was the name of that pirate captain? he thought. The Iron Bull. That's what Maevaris had said. Well, if the man's services were for hire, then Dorian would hire him. 

"Fuck it," said Dorian, alone in his apartments as he hunted for something suitable to wear to the docks. Nothing a man would wear as he went out looking for a proper bride, a woman resigned to matrimonial bondage to a man who didn't want her. Fuck all of it. The parties, the dances, the pamphlets on Alexius' shelf, the very little care Alexius had shown over the college's rejection of the proposal.

"A shame," Alexius had said, as though it were not all Dorian had worked upon, all he'd cared about for five years. Then he'd said, "Well, perhaps you'll have more time to find your father a daughter, eh?" as a joke. Yes, a clever joke. What a dear friend, Alexius. 

So fuck it. Fuck all of it! Dorian wrenched a discrete tunic from the back of his wardrobe and then tore at the belts securing his finer blouse. And when exactly had he last done anything it was that he wanted? Anything other than all that work Alexius had wasted on the college? Five years. Five years, and it was Alexius who was the magister, Alexius who went before the college and threw out everything Dorian had slaved over and said here it is.

Dorian tucked the tunic's ends into the rough trousers and buckled on a lean belt with a tarnished clasp. Never visit a whore in rich clothes, his mother, half-mad on champagne from the party and laughing as she undid the clasps in her ears, had advised him. "But don't tell your father I said that."

To hell with every promise; he'd bury each and every one of those shits. That's what they were, shits gilded with noble intent but crap all the same. He'd laugh, too, as he buried them, like Mother had laughed. He'd do this, and then-- What? Then, thought Dorian as he put on the boots that had languished six months beneath his bed, he'd buy a god damned ship of his own with the credit of his name. In his fury he thought it brilliant. He'd buy a ship, yes, and hire a crew to manage it and (he thought, and:) a godless heathen Qunari, Maevaris' Iron Bull who belonged to no one and no thing, to captain the damn boat if he had to. Yes, if he had to do it.

That was exactly what Dorian did.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: the Bull plants a shut up kiss on Dorian. It isn't something he asked permission for. There's context to it, and Dorian really doesn't mind it, and it's something I intend to explore in the longer story, but plainly put, there it is. Think of it like the first kiss in The Mummy (the fun Mummy, with Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser and Oded Fehr).
> 
> This encounter between the Bull and Dorian is actually a scene I didn't intend to include in the larger story, as I thought it might be more fun to simply allude to the events so I could focus instead on the fall-out and how it might influence Dorian and the Bull and their relationship. Unfortunately I just wound up not having enough time to write the larger story; certainly I wasn't going to be able to finish it before the posting date, and I don't want to start posting a WIP if I don't have the rest of it drafted. So I took some advice AislinCade gave me a while ago and decided to try and write a background event; and here we are.
> 
> Anyway, the point being: there's a bigger story coming at some point. This particular fic and all its details may or may not be wholly in line with that. Who knows where this road may go! Et cetera, et cetera.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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